About Monomania

It all began when I bought a postcard of a young woman in rustic dress standing with a barrel organ. The card on the barrel organ reads ‘Molly O’Morgan’. The young woman is staring out from the photograph as if she has a story to tell. There is a story of Molly O’Morgan, the daughter of an Irish mother and an Italian organ-grinder father, who had dark brown hair and laughing eyes. It is said her mother died when Molly was young and she and her father left Ireland with a barrel organ and monkey to take their chances in Europe. Molly would dance while her father played the barrel organ and the crowds were charmed into parting with their coins. They travelled from city to city and eventually arrived in Monte Carlo where Molly’s fortunes changed. She was noticed by Duke Medici-Sinelli, an elderly widower, who naturally enough was also rich and charming. The Duke arranged for Molly to appear at a theatre and in the way of fairy tales she immediately became a star. Molly and the Duke married and unkind rumours suggested she was a gold-digger although the couple seemed devoted to each other. When the Duke died Molly did not marry again but came to Monte Carlo every year and stayed in the same suite in which she and the Duke had spent their honeymoon. She was said to live in Hungary with a distant branch of the Duke’s family.

Ella Retford

In February 1929 the Nottingham Evening Post reported the death in Hungary of the Duchess Maria della Casa Medici-Sinelli, formerly Molly O’Morgan. The article recounts her story as true and as the inspiration for the music hall song Molly O’Morgan ‘with her little organ’. The song certainly existed, written in 1909 by Fred Godfrey and Will Letters, but Molly herself may have been part of a romantic myth. The Nottingham Evening Post article is the only reference I can find to a real Molly O’Morgan. Ella Retford had a great success with this song in the pantomime Jack and Jill and the Sheffield Evening Telegraph stated ‘Molly O’ Morgan goes with a swing that is irresistible and compelling. You positively must sing it’.

Alice Lloyd

In the same year, 1909, Alice Lloyd had a hit with the song in New York and determined to feature it throughout her American tour. It would be delightful to believe that Molly O’Morgan existed but I’ll leave that for you to decide. The young woman in the photograph is not named and I’ve come to the conclusion she is in fancy dress – an unromantic end to a romantic story.

‘I was extraordinarily pretty’ states Caroline Otero in her autobiography My Story and this much is true. Music hall singer and dancer, courtesan and gambler, La Belle Otero lived a life of extremes and exaggerations that would raise eyebrows today. She claimed her mother was a beautiful Andalusian gypsy, Carmen, who danced, sang and told fortunes. Such was her beauty that a group of passers-by including a young Greek army officer, gazed at her in admiration as she was engaged in the unromantic task of hanging out the washing. The autobiography makes much of the courtship and devotion of the young man and tells of his death in a duel with Carmen’s lover. It is more likely La Belle Otero was born into a poor family in Galicia in November 1868 and given the name Augustina although she adopted the name Caroline at a young age. As a child she was sent away to work as a servant and is said to have been raped at the age of ten. It’s no wonder she gave herself a more romantic beginning.

At thirteen or fourteen Caroline Otero seems to have run away with a young man who found her work as a dancer in a Café. She moved up the scale from theatre to theatre, starring at the Folies Bergère , collecting and discarding admirers and lovers. It is said men fought duels over her and left themselves penniless after showering the object of their affection with flowers and jewels. A writer in The Sketch in 1898 reports that Mdlle Otero came on to the Alhambra stage in a salmon-pink dress covered in diamonds and turquoises with her fingers heavy with rings, the dress setting off her pale complexion and black hair to great advantage. The diamonds, worth millions of francs, were tokens of the esteem in which she was held by her admirers. The writer goes on to say that ‘most performers humbly seek the suffrages of their audience; La Belle Otero, whose equipment is in many respects inferior, from the artistic point of view, to that of her competitors, demands them as a right.’

Otero was adept at self publicity and in 1902 the Paris correspondent of the Express writes that an engineer in Brussels was constructing an airship for her ‘by means of which she hopes to make a triumphal entry next August into Biarritz.’ She was worried it could be dangerous and so the balloon was to be dragged along by a car attached by a thin wire. If there was an accident she could ‘descend to the car by means of a rope ladder, which she will have tied in to the airship. The airship will float gracefully above the automobile at a height of 100ft.’ Mistress to ambassadors, princes, including the future Edward VII, and nobility throughout Europe, La Belle Otero scandalised and fascinated society in equal measure. Her weakness was gambling and she lost vast sums of money at the tables, sometimes her own and often her admirers’ fortunes. The Tatler tells us that in 1909 police raided a gambling club in Paris and found fifty women and ten men. On further investigation another woman, Caroline Otero, was found in a cupboard.

Liane de Pougy

Stories were rife of her exploits including a report in a Mexican newspaper that Otero had shot a love rival, Liane de Pougy, through the heart. Liane de Pougy was another famous courtesan and actress of the day. Both ladies were said to be very much amused by the report. In 1907 she insured her ankles for £15,000 each and was advertised as the only dancer with ankles worth £30,000. She was not universally admired and in 1895 the Evening Telegraph and Star reported a court case from Paris concerning the notorious Otero. She was living in an apartment in the Rue Charron rented by her English friend, Mr Bulpett, and the landlord charged him with not fulfilling the terms of the lease, namely that the apartment should be kept in a respectable manner. The landlord claimed Otero was damaging to the value of his property as other people objected to her. Two other tenants had signed a petition saying if she did not move they would break their leases. The defence denied any scandal had been caused by Otero’s presence in the apartments and that she and Mr Bulpett had as much right as other tenants to give dinners, hold receptions, have a carriage at the door and live a life of luxury. The judgement was in favour of Mr Bulpett.

The author, Colette, knew Otero when the great dancer was in her forties and describes her in My Apprenticeships as dancing and singing for her guests for up to four hours and having a body that had ‘defied sickness, ill-usage and the passage of time.’ The character of Lea in Colette’s novel Chéri is largely based on Otero and her lifestyle.

La Belle Otero retired after the First World War having built up a vast fortune but her love of gambling was to be her undoing and she died in relative poverty in 1965 at the age of 96. The Tatler had rather prematurely announced her death in 1947. Her autobiography is a ripping yarn rather than a factual account but she had a sensational life and career and who can deny her a little economy with the truth.

Music hall life was often far from the glamour and glitter we might imagine as this description of a dressing room by singer Lilian Warren shows. She is being interviewed for the trade Paper The Era in 1905 and remembers how artistes would apply their make-up by a ‘small piece of candle’ and a mirror which they supplied themselves. She tells of a music hall in Aberdare where thirteen performers shared one dressing-room where they clubbed together to make the room more acceptable. Lilian bought coal for the fire and the other girls provided the candles. By the time of her interview there had been a marked change with more comfortable, clean dressing-rooms provided.

Jenny Hill, ‘The Vital Spark’ became a successful and respected serio-comic but started life in poverty. At a young age she was articled for five years to the Bradford Tavern and her life was not her own. She started work cleaning the bars at a very early hour and then was expected to be changed and in the singing room by mid-day to harmonise with the drinkers. She often worked until 2am and food was scarce. Jenny died in her late forties and her early life took a great toll.

Marie Lloyd

Marie Lloyd was known as being kind-hearted and was well aware of class distinction and the poverty of the working classes. One day she was leaving a music hall at the end of a performance when she found a group of children round the stage door. They had no shoes and generous Marie took them to a local shop and bought them boots. The next day they were at the stage door again but with no boots. This was recounted by another performer who was with Marie Lloyd at the time.

Vesta Tilley

Vesta Tilley encountered a different kind of behind the scenes experience when performing at a dinner for ‘the poor of London’ given by the King. She arrived at a large building in the city wearing her Eton schoolboy costume and found there were several rooms being used for the dinner. She was running up and down the stairs trying to find the right room passing various officials on the way. Vesta heard one of them indignantly comment that the problems were not helped by these boys getting in everyone’s way.

In her autobiography Vesta Tilley remarks on the rivalry that could exist between performers amid the desire to be top of the bill. There could be appropriation of a successful artiste’s songs or of part of their act and music hall managers were often unsympathetic as they could pay the imitator less money. Vesta felt that in some cases the audience wanted a particular song rather than a particular singer. She mentioned the case of mimics such as Cissie Loftus who was acknowledged as an excellent performer but would have songs lifted from her act by others who made little attempt to portray their subject in a way that was recognisable to the audience.

Cissie Loftus

Music hall performers had their highs and lows on and off the stage but they understood their audiences and their audiences loved them for it.

Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, Recollections of Vesta Tilley, The Early Doors – Harold Scott

In Victorian and Edwardian society women were often portrayed as the weaker sex but music hall was another world altogether and audiences flocked to see women of prodigious strength full of confidence in themselves and their right to perform. One such was the Great Athelda, born Frances Rheinlander in Manchester, who performed on the music hall stage from around 1912. Athelda was reported to have made her debut in Buenos Aires in December 1911. She was also known as the miniatureLadyHercules and Britain’sBeautifulDaughter.

We know from reports at the time that her act began with various poses showingsinew, fibreand muscle without distortment and that her posing created somethinglike a sensation in Dewsbury. She would pose while manipulating a dumbbell. In her own advertisement in 1913 she describes her act as dignified posing without ornamentation or drapery, showinggenuine muscular development void of fat or pencilling. She sees herself as a graceful figure of beauty, muscle and concealed strength. I haven’t found reports of her height but she weighed 9st 5lb, just under 60 kilos, and was said to hold the record amongstladies for lifting a half-hundredweight by means of her little finger. She would invite people on to the stage to check the weights were genuine.

In 1916 Athelda claimed to introduce an entirely new novelty in her speciality act which consisted of a group of women in classical poses, featuring acrobatic bending, singing etc which was all arranged to work in harmony. She had previously worked with female assistants, one of whom was called Tiney Loretta. In 1918 she specified she could work on any size stage as she travelled with an elaborate, unique fit-up which was in sections and that she had the equipment to produce her own posters, daybills and throwaways. This strong woman seemed determined to be independent in any way she could.

Vulcana and Atlas

Athelda was always keen to portray herself as an honest performer and made a point of saying she did not write her own press notices or encourage reporters to say good things about her. There could well have been some needle in her pronouncements as she had a rival in the strong woman world whose name was Vulcana. I’ve written a previous post about Vulcana so won’t go into detail about her here. Performers placed adverts in the trade publications of the day and it is interesting (and amusing) that in The Stage where, advertsbeingfeatured in alphabetical order, Athelda is placed immediately before Vulcana who appeared with the Atlas troupe.

In 1912 the two women were keen to win over promoters and managers and be at the top of the pecking order with Athelda writing that instead of swanking about her abilities she is a real weight-lifter while Vulcana claims to be the strongest lady living. The Great Athelda maintained she asked no favours and said she let her act speak for itself whereas Vulcana made great play of the fact that she had defeated every woman who claimed to lift heavy weights. Vulcana threw out a challenge that she would lift heavy weights against any woman who had the courage to cover her money. The following year in June 1913 Athelda accepted a challenge made by Vulcana but was defeated. She claimed she did not have fair play and issued a £10 side challenge to Vulcana to appear at Vint’s Palace in Llanelli on a Friday evening to ensure a fair test of skill of the two strong women. So far I can’t find evidence that the challenge was taken up. It was exciting for the audience and guaranteed good houses for the managers.

I’m including cards of two more strong women, Herculine and Madame Soffritti as well as a photo I came across of a would-be Athelda. Any information on Madame Soffritti would be much appreciated.

Madame Herculine

Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive. All images from the Monomania collection.

The nature of music hall life meant that the theatrical landlady was a figure looming large in the lives of performers. When lodgings were found, the artistes were dependent on the landlady for food and comfort. As early as 1864 a writer in the Newry Telegraph tells us the British landlady nourishes a general spite against mankind and that she reminds her lodgers of the soft settees they have left at home by the painful contrast of a few flinty chairs and a horse-hair sofa, on which to snatch an interval of slippery repose. The landlady was often portrayed as ruling with a rod of iron, out to make as much money as possible by providing as little as possible. However, an article in the Manchester Courier in 1887, paints a much more glowing picture in which the landlady ‘obliges’ in different ways. She prepares late suppers, provides newspapers which might have ‘notices’ in them and could even supply a loaf of bread for the lodger of a less diligent landlady.

Madeline Rossiter

Performers often finished an engagement in one town and travelled to the next on the same evening. The Kebbles write that they will leave Southport on Saturday night and arrive in Edinburgh at seven the next morning. They add they are staying with Mrs Shaw. Annie Laurie, a refined comedienne and dancer, travels from Leicester to Middlesbrough and writes to Mrs Nicolson that she will arrive on the Sunday night about ten. She apologises for not having ‘wrote’ sooner. Madeline Rossiter thanks Mrs Brown in Cardiff for sending on a handkerchief and sends ‘best love’. These performers seem to know their landladies and feel comfortable with them.

Annie Laurie

There is a story of an artiste providing a landlady with eight sausages to be cooked but only six appeared at the table. The landlady boldly stated sausages do shrink so in cooking. Vesta Tilley tells of lodging in Manchester over the Christmas period in the same house as Dan Leno and his family. They were both very young and were looking forward to the Christmas Day feast provided by their families but cooked by the landlady. The meal was to be on the table by six o’clock at the latest so that they could return to the theatre for the third and last show. When they arrived for the turkey and plum pudding they found the landlady and her husband had been celebrating enthusiastically and had forgotten to cook the dinner. The Christmas feast descended into tea and boiled eggs.

Vesta Tilley

In 1887 Alexina Anderson was appearing in Robinson Crusoe in Leeds and was charged with assaulting her landlady, Mrs Wilcock. The defendant asked her landlady for some hot water and some unfriendly words passed between them with the pantomime star applying a forceful epithet to Mrs Wilcock. Miss Anderson was said to have struck her three times with a portion of fishing rod and was found guilty with a fine of ten shillings. In 1895 in Blackburn Mrs Hyland, a landlady, was summoned for using abusive language. Miss Doris, a cast member from the pantomime Babes in the Wood, was lodging opposite Mrs Hyland but visited other cast members at Mrs H’s house. The landlady was asked to serve a cup of coffee but Mrs Hyland brandished a poker and threatened to brain the lady if she didn’t leave the house. The police were called and she locked the officer and the others in a room together. Mrs Hyland was fined five shillings and costs.

The landladies had photographs displayed of their lodgers and kept a visitor’s book in which the artistes wrote their opinions of their stay. A couple of newspaper articles of the time point out that that the comments were always complimentary as they would probably need to stay there again. The performers were always complaining about their lodgings in private. Landladies had a constant stream of performers with different wants and needs, sometimes staying for as little as two nights but expecting decent food, a comfortable bed and a clean room. Sometimes they found it, sometimes not. This is an advert from the Sussex Express which lists theatrical lodgings alongside adverts for church roof shinglers and ferrets.

Thanks to the British newspaper archive.co.uk, Recollections of Vesta Tilley

The Brighton Hippodrome started life as a skating rink and then became a circus before finding it’s true calling as a venue for dramatic and variety performances in 1902. Tucked away in a narrow side street the rather plain exterior hid a glamorous venue designed by Frank Matcham, the theatre architect extraordinaire. It held around 2000 people and had five bars, refreshment rooms, lounges and promenades, warehouses, stabling and a large open yard. Before the grand opening a journalist from the trade paper, the Entr’acte, remarked that the facilities for dispensing liquors are very considerable while an advert for musicians states that evening dress and sobriety are indispensable. There was to be an orchestra of eighteen musicians, all to be experienced in the variety and circus business, and a first violin, piano, cello and bassoon were needed to complete it. In July 1901 first-class acts of all kinds were directed to write immediately to secure their bookings.

Vesta Victoria

We know that the biggest music hall stars of their day appeared at the Brighton Hippodrome, including Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley and Hetty King. Vesta Victoria, a very popular singer and comedian, had an off-stage adventure during her time at the Hippodrome in 1906. She went for a moonlight motorboat ride with some friends and when they were seven miles out to sea the petrol for the engine caught fire. They couldn’t put out the flames and the Derby Daily Telegraph reports that just when the situation appeared to be desperate, Miss Vesta Victoria lit upon the expedient of tying her motor-veil to a boat-hook and of waving it in the moonlight. This was seen by fishermen who rescued the group and brought them ashore.

Vesta Tilley

In her autobiography, Vesta Tilley tells of her experience in Brighton when playing the Hippodrome in the First World War. As Brighton was a coastal town no lights were permitted at all and she says she was obliged to literally feel her way from the Hippodrome to the Metropole Hotel each night after the performance. On one particularly dark night she and her maid found their way to the seafront and Vesta suggested guiding themselves by the railings. They finally realised they were getting no closer to the hotel and found they were walking round and round a small circular garden in the centre of the road. VestaTilley is reputed to haunt the Brighton Hippodrome, but in a dress rather than stage costume, and there is said to be a whiff of her favourite perfume backstage.

Marie Lloyd

In 1921 Marie Lloyd appeared before the Duke of York (George VI) and the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) at the Hippodrome and received the royal approval in that the ‘democratic‘ Prince of Wales applauded the performance despite the fact that it was not customary for royalty to applaud in theatres. So in the year before she died Marie was accepted and appreciated by the establishment.

To end with a bizarre story – in March 1907 the Mid-Sussex Times reported that the musical director at the Brighton Hippodrome had written to say that one of his hens had laid an egg weighing over five ounces. The egg could be seen at the Hippodrome any evening.

This is the Hippodrome at the present time. There is a campaign to save and restore the building. The website is ourHippodrome.org.uk

Ada Reeve was born in London in 1874 into a theatrical family and she made her debut at the age of four in the pantomime Little Red Riding Hood at the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel. Using the name Little Ada Reeve she continued to appear in plays and pantomime to great acclaim. Her elocution was said to be ‘peculiarly free from Cockney taint.’ In an advertisement in the trade paper, the Era, in May 1884 Little Ada Reeve announced she was at liberty for speciality and Christmas for the principal child’s part and was said at ten years of age to be a singer, actress, dancer, reciter and drum soloist.

Ada turned to the music hall when her father became ill as a way of earning more money to support her large family. Her first appearance at the age of fourteen was at the Hungerford Music Hall, better known then as Gatti’s-under-the-Arches in Charing Cross. She delivered comic songs, the words of which she is reported to have spoken with a little singing at the end of each line. She was a dainty dancer and not averse to finishing her act with a cartwheel across the stage encouraged by the audience shouting, ‘Over, Ada’. Eventually she gave up on this, telling them, ‘I’m grown-up now!’ Her popularity was such that when she appeared at the Hippodrome Portsmouth in November 1907 her name featured seven times in the advertising material with theatre patrons urged to buy tickets at once owing to the great demand for seats. We are told it was a special engagement at a millionaire salary. The rest of ‘the wonderful star company’ is squeezed in at the bottom of the advert.

Ada also made a name for herself as an actress and performed in musical comedy travelling to the States, South Africa and Australia appearing in theatres and music halls and winning admirers wherever she went. In interviews she was quick to dispel the myth of drinking champagne out of slippers and insisted it was all very proper with the evening ending with a thank you and goodnight on the doorstep. She received many letters from stage door johnnies and in a production where she played the part of an actress she would sometimes amuse herself by reading out these real billets-doux instead of sticking to the script.

In 1905 Ada sued the Weekly Dispatch for misrepresenting her in a published interview. She was read the article before publication and objected to certain content but it was published anyway with her signature as if she had written it. The article stated in a headline that Ada Reeve earned £250 a week and she denied having said this as it was untrue and would make her look foolish and boastful to say so. Other performers had mentioned it to her and it was thought to be in bad taste. She also denied signing the article. The defendants claimed she had not quite understood their intentions but agreed to pay her costs and the action was terminated.

Ada was herself taken to court by Millie Hylton, ‘her stage rival’, whose counsel asked for Ada to be committed to prison. She had breached an undertaking not to sing Miss Hylton’s song I couldn’t help being a lady. Miss Reeve said she only sang the song once, as an encore, ‘because she had received so many encores that she did not know quite what to give.’ The judge said that Ada could have forgotten the undertaking in the excitement of the encores. He accepted her apology but she would have to pay the costs of the case.

Ada Reeve continued to work as an actress on stage and in film. Her last stage role was at the age of eighty and she appeared in her last film at the age of eighty-three. She died in 1966 at the age of ninety-two. She had that special something which audiences responded to and in this clip we can see that charm and hear that voice, still clear in her eighties. She is talking to Eamonn Andrews after an appearance on the television show This is your life.

Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, Fifty years of Vaudeville-Ernest Short, The Northern Music Hall -G. J. Mellor, The Big Red Book